How is Commercial Gender Categorization of Perfumes Related to Consumers Preference of Fragrances?

On the commercial market, most perfumes are categorized as either feminine or masculine, although the odour quality of feminine and masculine odours are overlapping and constitute a dimension rather than two separate clusters of odours. Earlier research has shown that typical perfume consumers tend to prefer perfumes positioned in the middle of this gender-dimension. The current study investigates the preference of perfumes from the middle of the gender-dimension while these are applied on human skin. The blindfolded participants indicated if they wanted to use the fragrance and if they wanted their partner to use the perfume, and tried to guess the gender of the person each perfume was applied. Results show that the gender of the human did not affect the preference. Moreover, the preference did not differ between female and male participants, indicating that the commercial gender categorization is less important to the perfume consumers. Consequently, the commercial gender categories do not seem to be sufficient for all perfumes. Instead, the categorization of perfumes could be according to other aspects, e.g. according to odour quality.